iPod and iPhone movies are played with incorrect orientation

Thanks for the report, it has been some time without any response or feedback in this bug report and we are wondering if this is still an issue for you with the latest release of Ubuntu the Natty Narwhal, May you please test with that version and comment back if you're still having or not the issue? Please have a look at http://www.ubuntu.com/download to know how to install that version. Thanks in advance and sorry for the late response.

Pedro,

Thanks for giving this bug some attention. Yes, this bug is still present in 11.04, and super annoying. I can at least tip my notebook on its side, but that's a bit more challenging for large desktop flat panels (or worse, old CRTs).

[Expired for gstreamer0.10 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

This still exists, waiting for some attention. Expiring old bugs because nothing changed is lame.

Set of movies in all 4 orientations. Note, it is an ordinary, not anti-gravity, cat.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Still reproducible in 11.10 with libgstreamer0.10-0 0.10.35-1

Still reproducible in 12.04.

It seems that the QuickTime file format uses a 3x3 transformation matrix to encode a mapping from 'camera space' to 'display space'. In the case of simple 90° and 180° rotations that matrix is all zeros and (minus) ones. So, this should just be a case of getting the bytes of the transformation matrix and working out which way to do the rotation.

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/QuickTime/QTFF/QTFFChap2/qtff2.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40000939-CH204-56313

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/QuickTime/QTFF/QTFFChap4/qtff4.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40000939-CH206-18737

An algorithm might go like:
parse bytes looking for 'mvhd'
skip ahead 36 bytes
read the next 36 bytes into a 3x3 matrix (4 bytes per element)
calculate the rotation
do the rotation during playback